Here's Hillary Clinton, classing up the joint.
"My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it," she said, dismissing calls to drop out.
Clinton is not going to get a majority of the delegates, but it appears she's not going to drop out on the off chance that someone might kill Obama. Howard Wolfsen clarified:
Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson defended the comments to The Post, "She was talking about the length of the race and using the '68 election as an example of how long the races in the past have gone -- she used her husband's race in the same vein."
In some sense, what he's saying is right. The call to drop out is premature by the standards of the 1992 and 1968 race. But her staying in the race has no precedent, since in both of those cases the race was not decided. It's not like Hubert Humphrey was waiting around in case someone went off and shot RFK, or Bill Clinton was hoping he could convince superdelegates to override the will of the voters in a clearly losing strategy. There were still primaries going on that could have a significant impact on the outcome of the race.
2004 is a better analogy. Did John Edwards or Howard Dean wait around, musing that perhaps John Kerry would be killed, even though he was clearly going to lock up the majority of the delegates? Of course not. They lined up behind the winner.
Look, I don't feel that strongly that Clinton should drop out, she will do what she wants, and I think she will unite behind Obama because it's the smart thing to do. Still, the assassination talk is, shall we say, suggestive of an extreme lack of character.
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